Beijing has begun instructing Chinese banks, ports and shipping and trading companies doing business with North Korea to implement the U.N. resolution to the letter.

Adam Szubin, the Treasury Department’s acting undersecretary for terrorism and financial intelligence, tells NPR that China is taking this very seriously.

“I know from my meetings here in Beijing that my counterparts have very much taken the resolution to heart,” he says.

Szubin, who visited Beijing this week, says the new sanctions will hit hard enough to change Pyongyang’s “decision-making calculus.”

The new U.N. resolution is not just “adding a few new companies to a sanctions list or a few new North Korean officials,” Szubin says. Instead, it targets “every major aspect of North Korea’s access to international shipping, international banking [and] international trade to develop revenues for its missile and illicit nuclear programs.”

Although China appears committed, the sanctions put it in a tough spot.

First, says People’s University international relations expert Cheng Xiaohe, some Chinese companies are going to take a hit to their bottom line. China-North Korea trade was worth $6.86 billion in 2014.

“At the same time as we protect our national security interests, we must be prepared to sacrifice some of our own economic interests in order to accurately target North Korea with sanctions,” he says.

Cheng says the U.S. has its work cut out for it, collecting intelligence on the hundreds of Chinese firms doing business with North Korea, and on North Korean firms adept at concealing their business dealings behind fronts and shells.

And if Chinese firms are found to be violating the U.N. resolution, Cheng points out, they could themselves face sanctions.

“This could create new frictions between the U.S. and China,” he warns. “I hope that the U.S. will think carefully before it uses this big stick to crack down on Chinese firms.”

Cheng notes that China continues to supply North Korea with crude oil as humanitarian assistance. The sanctions allow this, even if North Korea may be able to refine some of the oil for military uses.

China says neither a humanitarian crisis nor regime collapse are acceptable outcomes for North Korea. But Zhang Liangui, a veteran North Korea watcher at China’s Central Party School in Beijing, says that at the end of the day, China cannot save North Korea from its fate.

“If North Korea is going to collapse,” he says, “no external force can prop it up. Frankly speaking, whether it collapses or continues to develop will mainly depend on its own domestic and foreign policies.”

UPDATE 5 (2016-3-15):According to UPI, the Philippines has searched a second DPRK ship.

Hong Kong has banned a North Korean freighter, which is blacklisted by new U.N. sanctions over the North’s latest nuclear test and rocket launch, from berthing at its port, a source with knowledge of the matter said Thursday.

The North Korean freighter Gold Star 3 arrived at the Hong Kong port on Wednesday to get fuel and supplies for its crew, but Hong Kong authorities did not allow the ship to dock at the port, the source said on the condition of anonymity.

The ship is among 31 vessels operated by a North Korean shipping company, Ocean Maritime Management, which is hit by the new U.N. sanctions.

For now, the ship is said to be staying in international waters, according to the source.

Media reports have said the Chinese port of Rizhao in the eastern Shandong province also barred another North Korean ship from docking at the port.

China has said it will “earnestly” implement the new U.N. sanctions, but the sanctions should not affect the well-being and humanitarian needs of North Korean people.

Still, China is unlikely to put crippling sanctions on North Korea because a sudden collapse of the regime could spark a refugee crisis at its border and lead to a pro-U.S., democratic Korea on its doorstep, analysts say.

UPDATE 3 (2016-3-6): North Korea ship impounded in Philippines. According to Yonhap:

A North Korean ship impounded in the Philippines last week was registered as being from Sierra Leone via a practice called flag of convenience, South Korea said Sunday.

Flag of convenience is a business practice of registering a merchant ship to a country other than its origin for the purposes of avoiding taxes and other regulations.

The Philippines seized the North Korean ship Jin Teng on Saturday, becoming the first country to enforce sanctions on the reclusive country since the United Nations Security Council passed a more comprehensive resolution last week.

Despite being Sierra Leone-flagged, the Jin Teng was seized because the sanctions are imposed via the ship’s International Maritime Organization (IMO) number, not its country of origin, a South Korean official said.

Nine other ships on the list are registered as being from countries other than North Korea, including Tanzania and Cambodia, the official added.

The case of sanctions against North Korea – where earlier resolutions were already adopted in 2006, 2009 and 2013 – provides a useful window into their efficiency and limits. All the more so because the debate on this latest round of sanctions has been long and hard (it has been nearly two months since the DPRK’s nuclear test of 6 January). As noted by ECFR’s Mathieu Duchâtel earlier this week, China and Russia have taken a big step towards tightening the noose around Pyongyang – by accepting to place limits on its external revenue, in areas that go much beyond the illicit activities directly targeted by the resolution. They have agreed to a ban on the export of coal, iron ore, rare earth and other minerals, as well as gold, and also to inspection of North Korean cargoes in other ports. The sanctions include North Korean diplomatic offices that harbour entities otherwise targeted by sanctions. All of these developments have the potential to be game changers. The fact that China – which received 90 percent of North Korea’s foreign trade given earlier sanctions – has agreed to the sanctions, certainly gives some indication of how vast the chasm between the Chinese and North Korean leadership is growing.

But more questions arise as a result of these sanctions, and on three different levels. Firstly, what are the limits of the resolution, secondly, how will it be implemented, and thirdly, what has been conceded or left out in order to secure this result at the United Nations Security Council.

The limits of these sanctions can be uncovered in the wording of the resolution itself. Almost all new sanctions can be overridden if the trade is being made for “humanitarian” or “livelihood purposes”. These exceptions only apply if they do not generate “revenue”, which would seem to reserve the provision of bona fide food or medical assistance. Alas, the resolution’s language appears to be contradictory in places. Point b of article 28 exempts trades which are “exclusively for livelihood purposes and unrelated to generating revenue for the DPRK’s nuclear or ballistic programs or other activities prohibited”. This clearly leaves the door open to other revenue streams. It is not clear whether the resolution will target North Korea’s export of indentured labour – not only in Russia, but in Poland and reportedly in Lithuania and Slovakia too. In these places there are North Korean workers remitting over 70 percent of their wages to the state – which leaves them with just $120 a month for living.

This loophole, along with the exclusion of oil imports from sanctions, has all the hallmarks of being imposed by China. There are many others too, such as the exclusion of coal re-exported from the port of Rason – a transit center for Mongolian coal towards Russia. Aviation fuel cannot be sold to North Korea but its planes can be fueled elsewhere on a return journey. North Korean financial institutions and firms elsewhere are subject to sanctions, with trade banned, but foreign firms already present in North Korea are not.

More important than these concerns is the undefined nature of “inspections” in foreign ports. In this respect, the US sanctions go much further by imposing checks on third parties. It will be interesting to see if the European Union, a champion of the “smart power” of sanctions, follows suit. Some, for example the French, who still suffer from the heavy fines imposed by the US on BNP Paribas because of its actions in Sudan, may beg to differ. In any case, the practical difficulties of checking, for example, on China’s immense export and re-export volume preclude an efficient implementation. What happens in Dandong, China’s notoriously opaque harbor that processes North Korea’s trade, is key. US sanctions will create moral hazard for traders, which is altogether a desirable but insufficient goal.

Which leads us to a third observation. The resolution has left a wide gamut of sanctions open to interpretation. In practice, these interpretations will be dictated by China, North Korea’s chief intermediary with the outside world. In some aspects, the resolution hands the key to North Korea’s economic fate to China, even if one might believe that North Korean diplomats are experts at circumventing restrictions, and creatively exploiting loopholes in “easy” third countries. After all, who will be checking the “humanitarian” nature of its relations with Namibia?

Chinese banks in the northern border city of Dandong have suspended the transfer of the yuan currency to North Korean banks, Chinese financial sector officials told Yonhap News Agency on Wednesday.

The move comes as the U.N. Security Council is set to vote on new sanctions against North Korea’s fourth nuclear test and rocket launch this year.

Employees of the Dandong branch offices of China’s top four state-owned banks, including Agricultural Bank of China and Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, as well as six commercial banks such as China Merchants Bank, told Yonhap that the suspension came after “orders” from their headquarters.

Since North Korea’s third nuclear test in 2013, the Dandong branches of the Chinese banks have halted the transfer of U.S. dollars to North Korean banks.

An employee of the Dandong branch of the Agricultural Bank of China said the order came down after North Korea’s fourth nuclear test in January.

Dandong is a border city between North Korea and China and a main conduit of bilateral trade between the two neighboring countries.

The U.N. Security Council unanimously adopted harsh sanctions Wednesday against North Korea, imposing some of the strongest measures ever used to pressure Pyongyang to abandon its nuclear weapons program.

The new sanctions come two months after North Korea tested what it claimed was a hydrogen bomb and a month after it conducted what was widely described as a banned missile test under the guise of launching a satellite into space. But U.S. officials began drafting the measures three years ago, soon after North Korea conducted a previous nuclear test, in order to move swiftly the next time it happened. Negotiations to win China’s support began two days after North Korea’s January nuclear test, its fourth in a decade.

The resolution is far more sweeping than existing sanctions requiring a link to proliferation activities. That precondition has been removed, in effect erasing the presumption of innocence.

It mandates cargo inspections for all goods going in and out of North Korea by land, sea or air, chokes off supplies of most aviation fuel for its armed forces, and bans the sale of all small arms and conventional weapons to Pyongyang. It also prohibits transactions that raise hard cash for North Korea through sales of its natural resources.

The resolution doubles the blacklist of people and institutions already sanctioned and requires countries to expel North Korean diplomats involved in any sanctioned activities.

One provision was designed to prevent Pyongyang from sending taekwondo instructors to train foreign police forces. Another bars North Koreans from specialized training at any school or research center in the world if the learning can advance Pyongyang’s nuclear and ballistic missile programs.

President Obama welcomed the sanctions as a firm and appropriate response to North Korea’s attempts to develop weapons of mass destruction.

“Today, the international community, speaking with one voice, has sent Pyongyang a simple message: North Korea must abandon these dangerous programs and choose a better path for its people,” he said.

As soon as the sanctions were released, the Treasury Department and the State Department updated their blacklists of people and entities tied to the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, the official name for North Korea, and its proliferation programs. The designation freezes their U.S. assets and bars Americans from doing business with them.

The U.N. sanctions, which target the country’s elites and avoid “adverse humanitarian consequences” for civilians, aim to accomplish what worked with less onerous sanctions on Iran by pushing the impoverished nation to quit pumping money into its nuclear program.

“The chronic suffering of the people of North Korea is the direct result of the choices made by the DPRK government, a government that has consistently prioritized its nuclear weapons and ballistic missile programs over providing for the most basic needs of its own people,” said Samantha Power, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations.

“The North Korean government would rather grow its nuclear weapons program than grow its own children,” she added.

The resolution was presented by the United States with the support of China, a sharp reversal, given Beijing’s longtime support of its neighbor. Although the United States has long had an embargo on trade with North Korea, China has provided food and fuel and has been a key trading partner. In recent years, living conditions in North Korea have improved, thanks in large part to China.

In the past, China has been unwilling to tighten the screws on Pyongyang, in part out of concern for what an imploding, unstable North Korea might mean for China’s own border. But recently North Korea has continued testing new weapons and missiles, disregarding China’s warnings and personal envoys.

After North Korea on Jan. 6 detonated a new device — calling it a hydrogen bomb, although most experts say it was a smaller nuclear device — China’s ambassador to six-party talks, Wu Dawei, went to Pyongyang to urge restraint. Instead, North Korea announced while he was there that it would test a missile.

China’s about-face suggests it has started to realize that doing nothing would impose growing political costs internationally — the possibility of a greater U.S. presence in the region and weaker relations with South Korea, which Beijing has been cultivating.

“I expect there’s been a delayed recognition in China to the political price China was paying, with South Korea in particular, for its equivocation or outright silence about how to respond to North Korea and North Korea actions,” said Jonathan Pollack, a specialist on East Asian politics and security at the Brookings Institution.

During a visit to Washington last month, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi hinted at the strains in policy toward North Korea.

“On the one hand, we’re saying to the international community . . . that the normal exchanges, especially those affecting the livelihoods of the North Korean people, should not be adversely affected,” he said at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “On the other hand, in order to uphold the international nuclear nonproliferation regime for the sake of denuclearization, our exchanges will be affected to some extent.”

But some analysts question the depth of China’s commitment to the latest round of sanctions.

“The real question going forward is whether China will enforce the new measures,” said Victor Cha, a professor at Georgetown University. “My guess is that China will squeeze for a little bit, but not too hard, while the U.S. will want China to squeeze harder and for a longer period of time.”

Sung-Yoon Lee, a Korean studies professor at Tufts University, said the U.N. sanctions, even if violated in the future, will become increasingly meaningful if ordinary citizens in North Korea are adversely affected.

“The fact the U.N. is involved will lend greater legitimacy to the effort to sanction North Korea and enable others, like Japan and Europe, to shoulder some of the blame if there are negative repercussions from sanctions, so the blame doesn’t just fall on the shoulders of the United States,” he said.

Preparatory work on the sanctions began in early 2013, immediately after the Security Council passed a sanctions resolution in response to North Korea’s third nuclear test, according to a State Department official who spoke about the sensitive negotiations on the condition of anonymity. U.S. officials concluded that incrementally ratcheting up sanctions was insufficient and that more restrictive measures were needed, the official said.

As technical experts from many government agencies met to share ideas, a contingency draft of sanctions was repeatedly updated to be ready for a fourth nuclear test by North Korea.

On Jan. 8, two days after North Korea announced the fourth test, diplomats from the U.S. mission to the United Nations presented a draft to the Chinese mission. There was little response during January as China studied the proposed sanctions, which dropped requirements to prove proliferation links, as China had insisted on previously.

China did not change its position during a Jan. 27 visit to Beijing by Secretary of State John F. Kerry or during a Feb. 5 phone call that Obama placed to Chinese President Xi Jinping.

But after the Feb. 7 missile test, the State Department official said, the Chinese came around to the U.S. point of view. Throughout much of February, U.S. and Chinese diplomats met several times a day to discuss provisions that had to be approved by Beijing, the official said.

“At 8 or 9 at night, diplomats at the U.S. mission would schlep to the Chinese mission,” the State Department official said. Then they would meet again the next day after Beijing had worked through the provisions overnight.

After a tentative agreement was reached early last week, U.S. officials had hoped for a quick adoption by the Security Council. But there were delays while Russia studied the sanctions to gauge their impact. Russia transports coal over a short stretch of railroad in North Korea to a port, and Moscow wanted reassurances it would not be banned, the official said.

In recent days, North Korea has boasted that more sanctions would not hurt. Now China, South Korea, Japan and the United States are awaiting its reaction. Early Thursday, hours after the sanctions were approved, the North fired short-range projectiles into the sea, South Korea’s Defense Ministry said.

“We’ve seen its reckless and unpredictable acts for years,” Power said. “We’ve seen threats directed at the continental United States and the Republic of Korea. We’ve seen cyberattacks on American companies costing hundreds of millions of dollars. We do not expect a change of behavior overnight.”

Read the full story here:
U.N. adopts sweeping new sanctions on North Korea
Washington Post
Carol Morello and Steven Mufson
2016-3-2

The World Food Program (WFP) has announced that Russia has donated 4 million dollars worth of wheat to feed particularly vulnerable populations in North Korea. According to the WFP, the amount will contribute to feeding about 620,000 people for four months. I’ve pasted the WFP press statement below, but interested readers should also check out the Facebook post of the Russian Embassy in Pyongyang, which has pictures of the delivery ceremony. WFP’s statement:

PYONGYANG – A ship carrying wheat donated by the Russian Federation successfully delivered its cargo in the port of Nampo today. The wheat will help the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) to meet the nutritional needs of more than 620,000 children and women for a period of four months.

“Russia takes an active part in WFP’s operations in general, and in particular in its activities in DPRK. We highly appreciate WFP’s efforts aimed at providing aid to the most vulnerable strata of the country’s population, including children and pregnant and nursing women. We know that the Koreans feel deep gratitude because of this timely and valuable help. We consider it important that Russian flour and wheat are used to produce nutritious cereals and biscuits in local factories,” said Alexander Matsegora, Russian Ambassador to the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK).

The wheat will be used in locally-produced fortified biscuits and “cereal milk blend” – a specially designed flour fortified with essential micronutrients, which is used to make pancakes or bread.

“I would like to thank the Russian Government for this generous donation and its continued commitment. The Russian contribution is timely following a poor harvest after last year’s drought and comes at the end of the cold and harsh winter. WFP’s assistance is crucial to ensure young children grow into healthy adults by giving them the nutritious food they need,” said Darlene Tymo, WFP’s Representative and Country Director in DPRK.

The wheat was procured by WFP thanks to a contribution of USD 4 million from the Russian Federation. In the last five years, Russia has donated a total of USD 22 million to WFP in DPRK.

Almost a third of children under five in DPRK do not have enough diversity in their diet and are short for their age – a condition known as stunting. If children miss out on crucial vitamins and minerals in the first few years of their lives, it can affect long-term development and growth. WFP’s nutrition assistance helps to provide vital nutrients to children, as well as to pregnant and nursing mothers.

Full statement here:
Russian Contribution Support WFP Nutrition Assistance In DPRK
World Food Program
03-01-2016

From a press statement today by the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA):

UN EMERGENCY FUND RELEASES US$ 8 MILLION TO ASSIST MOST VULNERABLE WOMEN AND CHILDREN IN DPRK

(Bangkok, 2 February 2016)

United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on 29 January 2016 released US$ 8 million from the UN Central Emergency Response Fund (CERF) for severely underfunded aid operations in the People’s Democratic Republic of Korea (DPRK). These funds will enable life-saving assistance for more than 2.2 million people most vulnerable and at risk of malnutrition.

The DPRK was one of nine countries to receive such grants within the overall $100 million allocation to underfunded emergencies. Undernutrition is a fundamental cause of maternal and child death and disease: in DPRK, chronic malnutrition (stunting) among under-five children is at 27.9 per cent, while 4 per cent of under-five children are acutely malnourished (wasting).

Around 70 per cent of the population, or 18 million people, are considered food insecure. Food production in the country is hampered by a lack of agricultural inputs and is highly vulnerable to shocks, particularly natural disasters. Due to drought in 2015, 11 per cent of the main harvest was lost.

Health service delivery, including reproductive health, remains inadequate, with many areas of the country not equipped with the facilities, equipment or medicines to meet people’s basic health needs. Under-five children and low-birth-weight newborns are vulnerable to life-threatening diseases, such as pneumonia and diarrhoea if they do not receive proper treatment or basic food, vitamins and micronutrients.

The number of South Koreans who visited North Korea almost quadrupled this year from a year earlier as Seoul has encouraged more civic groups to spur exchanges with the North, a government report showed Tuesday.

The number of South Koreans visiting the North reached 2,035 this year, compared with 552 a year earlier or up 269 percent from the previous year, according to a report by the Unification Ministry.

The tally did not include those who moved in and out of a joint industrial park in the North’s border city of Kaesong.

The government said in May that it will encourage more civic groups to increase their exchanges with North Korea to mark the 70th anniversary of Korea’s liberation from Japan’s 1910-45 colonial rule.

The two Koreas’ August deal to ease military tension also has given a boost to efforts to promote civilian inter-Korean exchanges.

Seoul has imposed punitive sanctions on North Korea banning massive state aid and trade since May 2010 to punish the North for sinking a South Korean warship. But it has encouraged civilians to increase humanitarian assistance to the North.

As part of the August deal, the two Koreas held reunions of families separated by the 1950-53 Korean War at Mount Kumgang in the North in late October.

In October alone, a total of 880 South Koreans visited North Korea, compared with 816 in January 2010, according to the report. The October tally was the largest monthly reading since 2009, it added.

Other major civilian exchange events included a joint project to excavate the site of Manwoldae, a Goryeo Dynasty (918-1392) palace in Kaesong, and football games held between the two Koreas’ labor groups in October.

Read the full story here:
S. Korean visitors to N.K. nearly quadruple this year: reportYonhap
2015-12-29

A Korean Texas Baptist minister delivered two tons of noodles, 10 solar panels, two diesel generators and other supplies to a hospital in North Korea between Thanksgiving and Christmas.

Yoo Yoon, director of the Korean-American Sharing Movement of Dallas, also took 350 pairs of winter socks, two freezers, six pairs of tractor tires and three sewing machines to three schools for orphans in Kwangwon province.

Yoon has traveled to North Korea more than two-dozen times in the last 20 years, including four trips in 2015. He typically delivers corn and wheat noodles to schools, orphanages and hospitals. Donors have included Texas Baptist Men and several Baptist General Convention of Texas-affiliated churches, and Baylor Scott & White Health has contributed medical equipment.

In September, the North Korean government denied Yoon permission to distribute food to orphans, due to a change in policy. However, he provided food for the hospital on his most recent trip, and he brought other supplies to the medical center and the schools for orphans.

“I have learned to adjust myself to whatever circumstances through 20 years of North Korea missions,” said Yoon, former Korean field consultant with the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship.

In September 2014, his daughter, Sara Yoon, an ophthalmologist, examined patients and consulted with doctors at the hospital in Wonsan City. On the most recent trip to North Korea, her father delivered batteries and bulbs for scopes and other equipment she purchased for the hospital’s ophthalmology department. He also distributed Christmas presents at the hospital.

“The Lord led me to tell them what Christmas is,” Yoon recalled. “So, I handed out 62 Christmas gifts to 62 people, letting them know it is a season of accepting a gift, since God sent his Son to forgive our sins.”

Read the full story here:
Texas Baptist delivers food and equipment to North Korean hospitalBaptist Standard
Ken Camp
2015-12-28

This report brings to the table new research on the dimensions of economic failure in modern North Korea, offers a quantitative view of how nations develop in our modern world, and where North Korea’s awful slide downward fits within this global tableau; offers admittedly approximate long term estimates of overall net resource transfers to the DPRK, including estimates of net transfers from the major state benefactors; and some indications about the interplay between concessionary resource transfers from abroad and the DPRK’s domestic economic performance. It concludes with some observations about the implications of these findings

This summer and fall has seen a somewhat contradictory stream of information about the North Korean food situation. First there were the drought warnings, which were closely followed by regime sources claiming that harvests were actually getting better thanks to agricultural reforms. During the fall, however, the picture painted by multilateral institutions like the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and the World Food Program (WFP) has been one of dire and continued problems.

In early October, the FAO said that North Korea’s staple food production could go down by 14 percent during the year compared to last year, as AFP reported:

North Korea’s staple food production could plummet by 14 percent this year because of bad weather, sparking fears of exacerbating chronic food shortages in the impoverished nation, according to the UN agricultural agency.

The gloomy forecast from the Food and Agriculture Organization comes as the reclusive communist country prepares for a lavish military parade Saturday to mark the 70th anniversary of the ruling Workers’ Party.

The North is expected to produce 3.7 million tonnes of rice and corn this year, down from 4.3 million tonnes last year, according to a report from the FAO early warning system.

Pyongyang plans to import 500,000 tonnes of rice and corn from abroad, the FAO said, but it will not be enough to feed its 25 million people.

The country, plagued by regular droughts, will face a total shortfall of 1.2 million tonnes of its staples.

State media reported in early June the country’s main rice-growing areas had been badly hit by the “worst drought in 100 years”.

North Korea saw significant rainfall later, but analysts said the prospects for this year were still grim.

Later last month, the FAO reiterated its concerns over North Korea in its yearly report on the state of agriculture in the world. Voice of America:

More than 26 percent of children in North Korea’s countryside are underweight, a U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization report says.

The agency, in its recently released “State of Food and Agriculture 2015” report, also estimated that there are twice as many undernourished children in the communist country’s rural areas as in its cities.

Andre Croppenstedt, an FAO researcher who wrote the report, told VOA that “it’s normal to have a much higher percentage of children underweight in rural areas as opposed to urban areas,” but that the gap “is perhaps a little larger than usual” in North Korea.

The North Korean ratio is the 24th highest among the 123 low-income developing countries. Among East Asian countries, North Korea’s ratio ranked fifth, after East Timor, Cambodia, Papua New Guinea and Laos.

And last month, WFP announced it was extending its aid to North Korea over next year due to expected food shortages. Voice of America again:

The United Nations’ food agency plans to extend aid to North Korea amid reports that the communist country is facing food shortages next year.

Damian Kean, a regional spokesperson for the World Food Program (WFP), told VOA this week the agency plans to extend the current food aid program for another six months.

“This current program cycle is supposed to be finished this December. What we decided to do is to extend the program until the middle of next year,” said Kean.

He added that the agency needs an additional $23.3 million to fund the extension.

The WFP is conducting an assessment of the nutritional status of North Koreans to determine if further assistance is needed after June of next year, Kean said.

The agency launched a two-year food aid program in July 2013, and it had already extended the program through the end of this year.

According to Kean, the food shortages are affecting the most vulnerable groups, including young children and pregnant women. More than 30 percent of North Korean children under five are experiencing stunted growth because of malnutrition, and more than a third of pregnant women and breastfeeding women are suffering from anemia.

This all suggests, as one might have expected, that North Korean claims of successful agricultural reforms may not have been the whole truth. At the very minimum, had such reforms had a strong and positive impact, harvests shouldn’t be declining compared with last year. Or harvests could just be stronger than what they would have been after the drought absent economic reforms. In any case, North Korean claims of a growing harvest do not seem to have held out.

UPDATE 10-10-2015:

Marcus Noland at the Peterson Institute’s Witness to Transformation Blog offers an interesting theory on these numbers: they aren’t that bad when compared with output over the last decade.

Last week Yonhap ran a story titled “N.K. may suffer severe food shortage next year: S. Korean expert” in which Kwon Tae-jin, formerly of the Korea Rural Economics Institute and now at the GS&J Institute, argued that North Korea may be facing its greatest food shortage of the Kim Jong Un era. Numerous articles, citing reports from the UN system, have highlighted high rates of malnutrition, particularly among vulnerable groups such as children.

Detailed data from the FAO displayed in the table below confirm that while production is forecasted to decline for coarse grains, maize, and rice, only in the case of rice is output forecasted to be below the 2011-13 average, and in this case, increased imports are expected to offset most of the shortfall.

What I wonder still is what this says about the progress of reforms, even if the figures aren’t particularly alarming. Also, the trend has been an increase in harvest figures over the past few years. So even if these figures aren’t particularly out of range, they still go against a trend of growth.

UPDATE (11-27-2015): Daily NK interviews one person in the country who says that this year saw a bumper harvest despite weather conditions, but not thanks to state reforms. The article says it’s not thanks to increases in collective farm harvests that things are going better, but because those tending individual plots have found better farming methods:

However, the number of people working hard to ensure the success of the rice harvests on collective farms is dropping. This is in large part due to the fact that despite reassurances from the state that farmers will receive sizable allocations of the harvest for their own use, for the past several years this has not been the case.

After “repeated failures by the authorities to fulfill stated promises,” he asserted, farmers have concluded that it makes no difference to them personally whether the collective farms do well or not.

The number of South Koreans visiting North Korea has shot up since the two Koreas reached a deal in August to spur inter-Korean civilian exchanges, government data showed Monday.

The number of South Koreans who traveled to the North reached 418 in the January-September period, excluding those who moved in and out of the joint industrial park in the North’s border city of Kaesong, according to the data by the Unification Ministry.

But in October alone, the number of such people came in at 880 as the two Koreas held several joint events such as an inter-Korean project to excavate the ancient palace site and a workers’ football friendly.

The October tally did not include the South Koreans who crossed the border for the reunions for families separated by the 1950-53 Korean War, held on Oct. 20-26.

The increase in such exchanges is due to the two Koreas reaching a landmark deal on Aug. 25 to defuse military tension.

The value of humanitarian assistance to North Korea has also increased, according to the ministry.

In April, the government gave approval to Ace Gyeongam, a foundation run by bed maker Ace, to send fertilizer to North Korea for the first time since 2010, when Seoul imposed sanctions on the North over a deadly warship sinking that year.

Ace Gyeongam also provided a small amount of fertilizer and other assistance needed for a greenhouse project in North Korea last month.

South and North Korea saw more vibrant civilian exchanges, but there has been no progress over high-level talks as the North has not responded to South Korea’s proposal to have preparatory contact for such inter-Korean dialogue.

Read the full story here:
Civilian inter-Korean exchanges on the rise: dataYonhap
2015-11-9

A South Korean civilian group crossed the inter-Korean border Tuesday to provide fertilizer and other assistance needed for a greenhouse project in North Korea, relevant company officials said.

Representatives from Ace Gyeongam, the foundation run by bed maker Ace, visited North Korea for the first time in six months earlier in the day to deliver items necessary for running greenhouses in Sariwon, about 70 kilometers southeast of Pyongyang, according to the officials.

“Most of the materials are greenhouse-related ones. The portion of fertilizer is small,” said an official at the Unification Ministry, which approved their visit to the North.

In April, Ace Gyeongam provided materials worth 200 million won (US$177,120), including fertilizer, vinyl and pipes that are needed to build greenhouses.

At that time, the South’s government approved a private group’s bid to send fertilizer to North Korea for the first time since it imposed sanctions on the North over a deadly warship sinking in 2010.

Seoul has vowed to encourage more civilian groups to increase humanitarian aid to the North this year in inter-Korean exchanges in non-political sectors.

South and North Korea reached a deal on Aug. 25 to defuse military tension and spur more exchanges at the non-government level.

In 2009, Ace Gyeongam set up 50 greenhouses on farms in Sariwon with an aim to increase the number to 300 units in the near future.

Read the full story here:
S. Korean civilian group gives fertilizer, other aid to N. KoreaYonhap
2015-10-27

The U.N. food aid agency said Thursday that its aid to North Korea’s vulnerable people dropped 44 percent last month because of a lack of funds.

A World Food Program spokesman said the organization in September provided 2,105 tons of food to 742,000 people who depend on external assistance, including pregnant women and children.

Last month’s amount was also significantly less than what the U.N. agency planned to provide. The agency’s goal was to provide 10,000 tons of food to 1.8 million people every month.

Recently, the agency scaled down distribution areas to 69 counties and cities across the country.

“The main reason for distributing less food in September was insufficient funding resources,” wrote Damian Kean, WFP’s regional communications officer, in an email to VOA.

To fund projects this year, the agency needs about $167.8 million, but it has secured only half of the amount so far, according to the agency’s website.

The FAO has also highlighted the problem. As mentioned in another post, while the North Korean government claims success for agricultural reforms and claims that the drought impact was very limited, international aid agencies paint a different picture. But data confusion is nothing unusual for North Korea, and perhaps the picture will change as both the North Korean government and multilateral agencies continue to reassess the situation.